Here is an interesting analysis and chart prepared by the Too Much , Institute for Policy Studies. What do you think?
Where Does Income Tax Money Really Go?
A handout, prepared by the War Resisters League, had the pie chart shown below. As I looked at, it seemed different from the budget figures I had seen. I am used to seeing $3.8 trillion as the spending budget for Fiscal Year 2011 and a smaller percent spent on Defense. I was confused initially, then I remembered: look at what is counted and what is not.
The War Resisters leave out the $726 billion to be spent for Social Security, arguing that that is covered by social security taxes rather than income taxes. It is therefore misleading, in their view, to include social security in calculating the spending distribution of income tax revenues. As a result, the proportion spent on Defense is higher (48%) as compared to the proportion (24%) shown on the offical pie chart.
Does the logic make sense? Or does this fit a politial agenda?
Here is the budget chart:
See the fine print chart at: http://www.warresisters.org/files/FY2011piechart.pdf
Would Smaller Classes Increase Academic Achievement?
Maybe it is cooking (see Oliver post below)—but maybe it is smaller classes that make a difference in academic achievement in our schools. Opinions abound, of course, so what can we learn from the research?
I came across a study by Krueger and Whitmore (2001) that looked at the results of the Tennessee’s Project STAR.[1] This was, at least at that time, the only large-scale randomized experiment ever to measure the effects of class size. In this experiment, 11,600 elementary students and their teachers were randomly assigned to small classes (13-17 students), regular-size classes (22-25 students), or regular-size classes with a teachers-aide. The experiment began in 1985 when students entered kindergarten and lasted through the 3rd grade. After 3rd grade, they returned to regular-size classes. The researchers looked to see if there are discernable impacts in the 8th grade testing as well as scores on ACT or SATs taken in high school.
Their bottom-line conclusion was that small classes did increase test scores, that it increased test scores more for black children than for white children, and those effects were still evident in later grades, although not nearly as great as they were in the earlier grades. Given their results, the writers conclude: “If all students were assigned to a small class, the black-white gap in taking a college entrance exam would fall by an estimated 60 percent.” (see http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/451.pdf) Continue reading
Values
Pretending that something doesn’t exist if it’s hard to measure leads to faulty models. You’ve already seen the system trap that comes from setting goals around what is easily measured, rather than around what is important….Don’t be stopped by the ‘if you can’t define and measure it, I don’t have to pay attention to it’ ploy. No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.”
Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, 2008. pp. 176-177
Jamie Oliver’s school dinners shown to have improved academic results
Gail’s Note: I just heard about Jamie Oliver and then came across this article–measuring the impact of his healthy meals program. This is the article as it appeared in the Guardian on March 29th. The link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/29/jamie-oliver-school-dinners-meals
He has been ridiculed by the chat show host David Letterman, accused of high-handedness by a local radio DJ and reduced to tears by recalcitrant fast food-consumers during his war on American obesity. He has even dressed up as a giant pea pod in an attempt to turn the US on to his healthy eating agenda.
So Jamie Oliver will doubtless be relieved to hear of a timely reminder of his more gilded reputation back home. Today an audience of prestigious economists was told that the healthier school dinners introduced by the celebrity chef had not only significantly improved pupils’ test results, but also cut the number of days they were off sick. The effects, researchers said, were comparable in magnitude to those seen after the introduction of the literacy hour in the 90s.
The proportion of 11-year-olds in Greenwich, south London, who did well in English and science rose after Oliver swept “turkey twizzlers” and chicken dinosaurs off canteen menus in favour of creamy coconut fish and Mexican bean wraps, according to a study of results in the south east London borough.
Spinning Health Care Approval
On March 25, 2010, the Politicker blog on CNN posted a story that lead with the headline:
Polls indicate support for health care reform up since vote
They offer this quick summary: “According to new polls, support for the health care reform bill has increased as a result of Sunday’s approval the legislation by the House.”
The article provided this information:
“Two of the surveys, by CBS News and Quinnipiac University, asked virtually the same question about health care both before and after Sunday’s vote, and in both polls support for the legislation rose by four to five percentage points.”
….
“CBS asked what Americans thought of “the current health care reform bill.” Quinnipiac asked what Americans thought of “the changes in health care passed by Congress.” These questions concentrated on the ‘contents’ of the bill. CBS indicated 42 percent approving of the bill; Quinnipiac indicated 40 percent approval. Forty-six percent of those questioned in the CBS poll disapproved of the bill, with 49 percent of those questioned by Quinnipiac disapproving of the legislation.”
They do not provide any comparison before and after. Maybe they forgot. But we readers have no way of knowing whether the “increase” was within sampling error. If the sampling error on the polls is the traditional +/-3 percent, there would have to be more than 6% difference to be outside of the range of just sampling error. But they do not provide any detail about the size of the samples or the sampling error, or the prior survey results.
The main problem with this article, however, is the spin. We are left with the impression that people are now OK with the health bill that the House passed it. But when you look at the reported data, less than a majority approve of this bill and almost half the people disapproved of the bill. The reasons likely vary–some disapprove because they don’t think government should be in the health care insurance business, they fear it will increase their costs, or they dislike the idea of mandates and IRS being the enforcers, while others dissappove because it did not provide a government option or did not create a single-payer system.
What is clear, however, –at least from my interpretation of this data–is that the American people remain divided on this legislation, despite the positive spin.
A Sustainable Deficit?
I suppose it was inevitable that “sustainable” would find its way into a discussion about the federal budget deficit. What “sustainable” means in any concrete sense, however, is not explained although its use suggests that the search for a balanced budget is over. Yes, economists and others argue over whether deficits are good or bad for the economy. The truth, however, is that no one really knows. The economy is a complex, non-linear system where simple predictions are illusive and science is unable to provide the kind of rock-solid evidence that can guide policy with some probability of success. Instead, the arguments are based on beliefs, assumptions and ideology as well as partisan views of possible election outcomes. What is a Sustainable Deficit? The sustainable deficit is not presented in dollars. Rather, sustainability is defined in terms of the GDP. For the Office of Management and Budget an annual deficit of 3% of the GDP is sustainable, while the Tax Policy Center (2010) suggests that 2% might be more realistic. Getting to either of these goals will be harder if the Bush-era tax cuts are extended but in any case, it will be challenging to find some political acceptable combination of increasing revenue and decreasing expenditures. Although talking of deficits in terms of the GDP is described as the “best way” to understand the deficit, it can be misleading. Understanding what gets counted in the GDP is still not totally clear to me even though I tried to figure it out (see earlier post). It strikes me that it is not an entirely clean measure because some federal spending is counted in the GDP. Does that mean if the federal government borrows more money to spend in the economy, then the GDP will increase? Will the deficit, therefore, look smaller because the GDP is larger? Continue reading
PEW: Defining Liberal, Moderate, Conservative
Question to the Experts at PEW: 3/16/2010 http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1520/ask-the-experts-pew-research-center
Q. I am always frustrated by polls asking whether one is a liberal, moderate, or conservative. My feeling is that about two-thirds of Americans are liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues. (In other words they are actually Libertarians.) Can’t you ask this question better? Even laying out “litmus test” questions on gun control, abortion, the effect of more or less taxes and deficits, gay marriage, national defense (foreign adventures), space exploration, size of government, global warming (and what to do about it, assuming it exists), etc. I fear that many people answer “moderate” because they are taking an average, so to speak, while having very strong but inconsistent and diverging opinions — anything but moderate.
Answer: “As you note, the standard ideology question assumes that most people are arrayed along a single left-right political dimension. For the reasons you point out, that doesn’t work for everyone. Unfortunately there is no simple solution to the problem, because we don’t have the luxury of asking a series of questions on every poll that could be used to classify people more precisely.”
Open Thread-March 2010
What research are you seeing that deserves comment?
What is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?
“Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 5.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter) according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 2.2 percent.”[1] –February 26, 2010
The key question about the economy—“how are we doing?” –is often presented in terms of the GDP. Is GDP going up or down? Going up is good, except when it goes up too quickly suggesting inflation. Going up too slowly—or worse—going down—is an indicator of a weak economy or a recession.
The GDP, like any measure used in statistics, must be valid (meaning it actually measures what it says it is measuring) and reliable (meaning it measures the same things in the same exact way every time). What exactly does the GDP consist of?
To find out, I went out to the Bureau of Economic Analysis website- http://www.bea.gov/. Located within the U.S. Department of Commerce, it is responsible for measuring GDP and all National Income and Products Accounts.